The basis of all testimonial knowledge under our Rules of Evidence is personal knowledge. This means that only those persons who have personal knowledge of the facts they are called to testify on are qualified to be placed on the witness stand. Personal knowledge means that the witness is able to testify on matters that were derived from his own senses and perceptions; personal knowledge means, in short, that the witness was actually there.

I remembered this interplay between a witness’s testimony and the need for his personal knowledge when I was listening to a friend tell me about the movie Shall We Dance? and why she wanted to soon get married. In the movie, Susan Sarandon, on analyzing why people get married, said:

We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. . . . I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you are promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things . . . . all of it, all of the time, every day. You are saying, “Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.”

The other day, I learned that a friend from Dulaang Sibol finally proposed marriage to his girlfriend of six years. Naturally, it was made on the Dulaang Sibol stage, complete with lighting, music and much drama. Under the pretext of picking up his youngest brother from Sibol, my friend led his soon to be fiancée into the theater and asked her to wait on the stage as he left to look for his brother. No sooner did my friend leave than the lights in the theater began to dim, except for a single spotlight in the middle of the stage. The sound of guitar and voices soon followed. It was my friend's Sibol batchmates, serenading her with, (what else?) a Sibol love song:

Ikaw ang mahal ko, hindi ang suot mo.
Ikaw ang mahal ko, hindi ang mabibili mo.
Hindi ang mga bagay-bagay na bumabalot sa 'yo.
Ang tunay na ikaw sa kaloob-looban mo,
Ang kailaliman ng 'yong pagkatao.
Ang ikaw na tunay at totoo: ikaw ang mahal ko.

Ikaw ang mahal ko, pati pangarap mo.
Ikaw ang mahal ko, pati mga pagkabigo.
Pati ang mga adhikain na tagos sa 'yong dugo.
Ang tunay na ikaw na sa iba'y tinatago,
Ang kaluluwa mong hindi maglalaho.
Ang ikaw na ikaw, Aparri mo't Jolo:
Ikaw ang mahal ko.

And then, at the opportune moment, out from the darkness she did not quite know from where, my friend finally emerged, with a red rose in his right hand, and a ring in his pocket. He stood in front of her, kissed her lightly on the cheek, gave her the rose, and knelt. She was freaked out, at first. She even tried to run away. And yet when she realized what was happening, she chose to stay. And in that choosing, I suppose, she meant to stay forever. Inextricably, forever.

When I asked my friend what he felt as he was walking towards her, kneeling in front of her, slipping the ring on her finger, he said that it was the most natural feeling in the world, that he wasn’t at all scared, of doubtful, or even anxious. If anything, he was excited at how she would react. And he got exactly the reaction he wanted.

“Everything just seemed so vivid for me,” he concluded. “Like I knew I was really there. Like I knew I was really in the moment. There’s nothing like it.”

I smiled. It was a job well done, and it was a proposal long coming. And now, remembering Susan Sarandon and Shall We Dance, I knew that my friend would not only be qualified to testify, but that he would be a very credible witness.

Interestingly, the Greek word for “witness” is μάρτυρια (marturia), from which the English word “martyr” is derived. I think that there is some poetry in this: that a witness, by placing himself before the bar of scrutiny, stakes his very being on the truth of what he will testify. Even if sometimes, it means that he will have to suffer. Even if sometimes, it means that he will have to die. I guess such is the responsibility of being a witness, especially to another person’s life: for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do they part.